Thanks, that helps me understand. The concrete example of people getting to the top and running out of game to play reminds me that game addictiveness often involves an element of unrealism to character growth, or mechanics which let you succeed just a little more easily than you’d expect to in real life.
I also hold in mind the example of well-established minecraft servers, where people who “run out of game” but want to keep hanging out with their friends often embark on ambitious community infrastructure projects to show off their power and skills. So an MMRPG trying to simulate the economy could potentially sidestep the world-war problem by encouraging a cultural definition of success more consistent with reality… although, that leads to all kinds of speculation about the complex motives behind actual world wars that I think I’d rather not dig into at the moment.
Thanks, that helps me understand. The concrete example of people getting to the top and running out of game to play reminds me that game addictiveness often involves an element of unrealism to character growth, or mechanics which let you succeed just a little more easily than you’d expect to in real life.
I also hold in mind the example of well-established minecraft servers, where people who “run out of game” but want to keep hanging out with their friends often embark on ambitious community infrastructure projects to show off their power and skills. So an MMRPG trying to simulate the economy could potentially sidestep the world-war problem by encouraging a cultural definition of success more consistent with reality… although, that leads to all kinds of speculation about the complex motives behind actual world wars that I think I’d rather not dig into at the moment.